SYMHC Classics: Great Vowel Shift

Charles Goodyear's work is important to so many things we have in the 21st century. But his life and his work to create a stable rubber was full of problems -- many of them caused by Goodyear himself. Research: Britannica Editors. "Charles Goodyear". Encyclopedia Britannica, 25 D ... Show More

This 2022 episode covers the development of penicillin, which started – but definitely did not end – with the chance discovery of some mold in a petri dish. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. 

Tracy shares stories of her time in London. There is also a discussion of Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin’s marriage.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. 

Over the course of the 1500s, English spelling started to become standardized, but the pronunciation of the language continued to change. By the early 1600s, English scholars noticed that spellings no longer reflected the way words were pronounced, and they recommended phonetic r ... Show More

Who spoke English first and what was it like? Nothing like it is today. Listen in to learn all about it. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. 

On this episode of Our American Stories, The History Guy shares the story of “The Great Vowel Shift” and the making of modern English which has now become the official language in over 75 countries; and Rick Bowers shares how an undercover agent infiltrated the KKK, and with the ... Show More

Prof. Simon Horobin examines how the English language has changed over time, addressing such vexed questions as whether Jane Austen could spell, the fate of the apostrophe and whether people who 'literally' explode with anger are corrupting the language. 

<p>Every language has its taboo words (which many people use all the time). But the list of forbidden words is always changing — and those changes tell us some surprising things about ourselves. Note: The swear words in this episode have been bleeped out. To hear a version of thi ... Show More

<p>Young people have always used language in new and different ways, and it has pretty much always driven older people crazy. But the linguist John McWhorter says all the &quot;likes&quot; and LOLs are part of a natural – and inevitable –evolution of language. This week on Hidden ... Show More

Welcome to The Story of Language: an original podcast series about language, linguistics, cognition, and culture. In this episode we talk about linguistic relativity: the idea that the language we speak can change the way we think. 

In the second part of our look at the sound of English in the early 1600s, we continue to explore the letters of the alphabet and the sounds that each letter represents. We explore the letters K through Z and examine how the sounds represented by those letters have evolved over t ... Show More